COVID

Last year, I was fortunate enough to travel to Naples, Italy for the first time.

One of the many reasons to visit this historical and culinary diamond is to experience the famed Margherita pizza, invented there in the late 19th century.

My wife, a group of travelers and I caught a break when a table opened at 50 Kalò, a pizzeria lauded in Italy’s Michelin guide and known for its amazing doughs.

We ordered a variety of Neapolitan pizzas, including a pair of the tomato, mozzarella and basil-based Margheritas. How fortunate we were.

One person at our table, however, refused to try them. Her name is Jan and she’s from New Jersey.

“It’s not better than New York style,” she told a stunned table. “I’m sure it’s fine, but my guy is better.”

We all know a Jan in our lives — or sometimes, it’s us. We all have our favorites, whether it’s pizza, tacos, draft beers or wines. But that shouldn’t stop us from trying something different.

And you don’t have to travel to Italy for a great slice. My colleague, Food columnist Jenn Harris, compiled a list of seven new favorite pizzas to try in Los Angeles.

Harris takes readers from Hermosa Beach to Eagle Rock, and from Santa Monica to Los Feliz in search of a lovely pie.

Let’s jump into a few selections from Harris’ list — and remember, don’t be a Jan.

A pepperoni pizza from Sonny’s in Hollywood.

(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Times)

Sonny’s (Hollywood)

I have seen all the social media influencers proclaiming Sonny’s to be the best new pizza in Los Angeles. It’s a giant pizza, with a diameter that seems like the size of a semi-truck tire. The crust is so crisp, the crackles are audible in every video of people munching on it.

A layer of bronze oil sits atop the pizza and settles in the many cups of pepperoni. It creates a sheen over the cheese. My fingers were shiny. The oil dripped down my chin. The cheese, sauce and crust coalesce into a slender slice that’s sturdy enough, but flops at the tip.

Some of the crust was cracker-like and golden. Some of it was burnt. It’s not a perfect pizza, but I appreciated the thin crust and the flavor of the grease-streaked mottled cheese. And if someone else is offering to go through the trouble of ordering the pizza, I’ll happily eat it.

The D-Fresh pizza from Redwood Pie in Hermosa Beach. The pizza is topped with pickled serrano chiles and spicy sausage.

(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Times)

Redwood Pie (Hermosa Beach)

I first encountered Erik Vose’s pizza when he was operating Vivace Pizzeria, a food truck that housed a 5,500-pound Acunto Mario oven. He made some of the best bubble-flecked Neapolitan pies in the city. Now he’s creating his own category of pizza at Redwood Pie in Hermosa Beach.

He’s making a sourdough crust with a blend of five flours from Central Milling. It’s bready and wonderfully chewy, a sheath of amber orbs and tight, tiny bubbles that create the ideal crunch.

The slice of pepperoni is textbook perfect from Redwood Pie, with a well-balanced sauce, a blanket of cheese and pepperoni cups that transform into blistered meat candy in the oven. For the white pie fans, there’s the “D-Fresh.” A rugged landscape of hot Italian sausage crumbles, frizzled basil and pickled Serrano chiles tops the mozzarella base — and leaves your lips humming with heat.

Pork-and-beef bolognese pizza at Bub and Grandma’s Pizza in Highland Park.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

Bub and Grandma’s Pizza (Highland Park)

If you’ve been following Andy Kadin’s career, you know that his breads can be found at restaurants around the city. So it should come as no surprise that his sourdough pizzas possess a wonderful tang and a durable crust that cracks with each fold and bite.

Kadin developed his pizza dough alongside chef Jeff Whittaker, who previously cooked at Hippo and Bar Monette. For the Bolognese pizza at Bub and Grandma’s Pizza, they slather the crust in a robust, meaty pork and beef ragu, with big boulders of meat protruding from the melted mozzarella.

The porchetta pie is painted with a decadent garlic cream and cloaked in ribbons of porchetta, charred broccolini and plenty of pepperoncini. It’s finished with a drizzle of garlic oil and a sprinkle of fennel salt. Imagine all the makings of a stellar porchetta sandwich in pizza form.

For more pizza wonderment, check out this link for the entire list.

The week’s biggest stories

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

Blazes and large-scale fires

Trump policies and reactions

Unpredictable, bizarre deaths

Rain, snow and wet weather

What else is going on

Must reads

Other meaty reads

For your downtime

(Andrew Rae / For The Times)

Going out

Staying in

L.A. Affairs

Get wrapped up in tantalizing stories about dating, relationships and marriage.

Have a great day, from the Essential California team

Jim Rainey, staff reporter
Hugo Martín, assistant editor, fast break desk
Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor
Andrew J. Campa, weekend writer
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters

How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to [email protected]. Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on latimes.com.

I was a bit skeptical when an emailer suggested touring Torrance as a way to appreciate this South Bay hidden gem. As a San Gabriel Valley product, I’ve enjoyed excursions to the iconic Rose Bowl or the historic San Gabriel Mission.

But Torrance? Really?

I’m a fan of the divine paradise cakes baked at two King’s Hawaiian locations in Torrance and am aware that Compton-based hip hop group N.W.A recorded “F— tha Police” in a city music studio.

Yes, that’s all fine and notable, but is this city of 140,000 actually tour worthy?

Debbie Hays, a resident and Torrance Historical Society docent, was up to the challenge of proving it certainly was when we met for a tour this week.

History meets Hollywood

We started at the Torrance Historical Society. Inside, visitors receive a quick lesson about the city’s creation, from a Spanish land grant to its founding by financial broker Jared Sidney Torrance in 1912.

A good portion of the talk centers on one of the city’s heroes, Louis Zamperini, known as the “Torrance Tornado.”

The Olympic and USC star, who competed in the famed 1936 Games, was a larger-than-life pillar captured in book and film, the latter the 2014 movie “Unbroken.”

“Louis was a bit of a misfit in his early days and his story is one of redemption and finding his purpose,” Hays said. “It started with track and of course he’s most known about his role in the war.”

“No other place in the world has more information and pieces of history tied to Louis than we do,” Hays says.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Zamperini was a U.S. Army Air Force bombardier in 1943 when his B-24 Liberator went down in the Pacific on May 27 with 10 additional crew members.

Zamperini floated on a life raft for 47 days, battling sharks and hunger before being picked up by a Japanese patrol boat.

He was tortured for two years before he was finally freed.

Hays showed off heirlooms, trophies and files donated by the Zamperini family, including more than 60 pounds of notes and awards, used in production of the movie.

“No other place in the world has more information and pieces of history tied to Louis than we do,” Hays said.

The ‘Ramen Capital of Southern California’

One of the more surprising details about Hays’ tour was the number of excursions the city offers.

You can take one of several self-guided tours of the city’s dozen or so microbreweries and craft beer tasting sites that highlight a burgeoning craft industry.

The most delectable tour, however, may be shown on the city’s Ramen Trail map, which declares Torrance the “Ramen Capital of Southern California.”

The town boasts a population of roughly 15,000 people of Japanese descent, so I’m sure they know something about good ramen.

As for locales, the film and television map tour denotes more than 200 locations where movies like “Scarface,” “Boogie Nights” and “Horrible Bosses” and television sitcoms like “Beverly Hills 90210” and “Barry” were filmed.

“We aren’t Hollywood, but we have many spots worth visiting,” Hays said. “All they’re all relatively close together.”

The Buffy home

One of her most popular excursions is the Fall Tour of Old Torrance, held annually in October.

Hays offers architectural and historic showings of Tudor, Mission and Spanish Colonial revival homes often butting up against each other. Most homes are over 100 years old.

“It’s a very eclectic tour that you don’t see every day in every town,” Hays said. “We’re not a cookie-cutter neighborhood.”

Yet, it’s the No. 4 spot on that tour, a 1914 Craftsman-style home at 1313 Cota Ave., that draws a pilgrimage year round.

The 2,296-square-foot home is forever known as “the Buffy home,” where the popular television show “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” was filmed.

The four bedroom, two bathroom home served as the home of main character Buffy Summers, played by actress Sarah Michelle Gellar.

“I’ve led private tours to the home, with sometimes as many as 80 people,” Hays said. “Fans come to the house, they cry, they take pictures, they hug the tree. They love it.”

Paradise cakes, ramen noodles, craft beer and Zamperini memorabilia. You don’t have to love Buffy to appreciate Torrance.

The week’s biggest stories

A pedestrian braves the rain in Venice Beach.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

SoCal’s stormy weather

Olympic updates

Crime in L.A. County

UCLA vs. the Rose Bowl

Homeless services in L.A.

What else is going on

Must reads

Other meaty reads

For your downtime

Cynthia Erivo, left, and Ariana Grande in the movie “Wicked: For Good.”

(Giles Keyte / Universal Pictures)

Going out

Staying in

L.A. Timeless

A selection of the very best reads from The Times’ 143-year archive.

Have a great day, from the Essential California team

Jim Rainey, staff reporter
Hugo Martín, assistant editor
Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor
June Hsu, editorial fellow
Andrew Campa, weekend reporter
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters

How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to [email protected]. Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on latimes.com.

The “toxic and chaotic” culture at the centre of the United Kingdom’s government led to a delayed response to the COVID-19 pandemic that resulted in about 23,000 more deaths across the nation, a damning report from an inquiry into the government’s handling of the pandemic has found.

The inquiry, which former Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered in May 2021, delivered a blistering assessment (PDF) on Thursday of his government’s response to COVID-19, criticising his indecisive leadership, lambasting his Downing Street office for breaking their own rules and castigating his top adviser Dominic Cummings. The inquiry was chaired by former judge Heather Hallett.

“The failure to appreciate the scale of the threat, or the urgency of response it demanded, meant that by the time the possibility of a mandatory lockdown was first considered it was already too late and a lockdown had become unavoidable,” the inquiry found. “At the centre of the UK government there was a toxic and chaotic culture.”

The global pandemic, which began in 2020, killed millions of people worldwide, with countries enforcing lockdowns in an attempt to stop the spread of the virus.

The UK went into lockdown on March 23, 2020, at which time it was “too little, too late,” the inquiry found, revealing that if the nation had gone into lockdown just a week earlier, on March 16, the number of deaths in the first wave of the pandemic up to July would have been reduced by about 23,000, or 48 percent.

“Had the UK been better prepared, lives would have been saved, suffering reduced and the economic cost of the pandemic far lower,” the inquiry found.

A failure to act sooner again, as cases rose later in the year, also led to further national lockdowns, Hallett’s inquiry found.

A campaign group for bereaved families said “it is devastating to think of the lives that could have been saved under a different Prime Minister”.

There was no immediate comment from Johnson on the inquiry’s findings.

The UK recorded more than 230,000 deaths from COVID, a similar death rate to the United States and Italy, but higher than elsewhere in western Europe, and it is still recovering from the economic consequences.

“Mr. Johnson should have appreciated sooner that this was an emergency that required prime ministerial leadership to inject urgency into the response,” the inquiry found.

Following the release of the inquiry’s findings, Sir Ed Davey called on Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative Party, to apologise on behalf of the Conservatives.

“As this report is published, my thoughts and prayers are with all those who lost loved ones during the pandemic, and everyone who suffered,” Davey said. “This report confirms the abject failure of the last Conservative government.”

Ellie Chowns, a Green Party MP for North Herefordshire, said the British people were “let down” by their government.

“Families and communities – especially children – are still living with the consequences. It’s vital to learn from this report, and invest far more seriously in pandemic preparedness, so that Britain can be secure and resilient if – or when – we are again faced with such a challenge.”

The first cases of COVID-19 were detected in Wuhan, China, in late 2019, and information from the country is seen as key to preventing future pandemics. As late as June 2025, the World Health Organization (WHO) said it was working to uncover the origin of the pandemic, with its work still incomplete, as critical information has “not been provided”.

“We continue to appeal to China and any other country that has information about the origins of COVID-19 to share that information openly, in the interests of protecting the world from future pandemics,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in June.

In 2021, Tedros launched the WHO Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO), a panel of 27 independent international experts.

Marietjie Venter, the group’s chair, said earlier this year that most scientific data supports the hypothesis that the new coronavirus jumped to humans from animals.

But she added that after more than three years of work, SAGO was unable to get the necessary data to evaluate whether or not COVID was the result of a lab accident, despite repeated requests for detailed information made to the Chinese government.

When I broke into journalism years ago as a fledgling Whittier-based high school sports reporter, one of my favorite side hobbies was asking locals what made their city famous.

Downey was always an interesting test case.

Some said Downey’s claim to fame is the oldest standing McDonald’s, or the Stonewood Mall, with some students boasting the rivalry between Downey and Warren high schools. Some have also cited the title of the “Mexican Beverly Hills,” which I and colleague Gustavo Arellano have always considered more appropriate for Whittier.

What wasn’t mentioned enough about Downey, particularly among the high school-aged students I spoke with, was the city’s ties to the Space Shuttle program. It was somewhat remarkable given the city’s “Home of the Apollo” nickname.

Downey’s reputation, especially among its younger residents, may reset soon thanks to a groundbreaking this Monday to announce the latest upgrade to the Columbia Memorial Space Center, a space museum that opened in 2008.

Benjamin Dickow, the center‘s president and executive director, spoke with The Times about what to expect Monday and beyond.

What’s happening Monday?

Astronaut Garrett Reisman, former Rockwell International and Boeing employees and area dignitaries will take part in a groundbreaking for an about 40,000-square-foot expansion to the existing museum.

The museum’s centerpiece will be a 122-foot-long, 35-foot-tall Downey-made space shuttle mock-up named the “Inspiration,” which is not available yet for public display.

The event begins at 10 a.m., rain or shine, and is located at 12400 Columbia Way in Downey.

For more information, check out https://www.columbiaspacescience.org/

A rendering of the completed front entrance of the museum.

(Nadia Gonzalez, on behalf of the Columbia Memorial Space Center)

Space Center changes and expansion

Dickow said the center was in the middle of completing the first of three phases, to be finished before the L.A. Olympics.

“Once the major construction really gets going, it’s about an 18-month process,” he said, “but if something happens with the shuttle, it’s going to add some time.”

Part of the first phase began in October 2024, when the partially-covered wood and plastic model was paraded down Bellflower Boulevard from a city maintenance yard to a temporary housing unit.

The expansion, known as the Downey Space Shuttle Exhibit and Education Building, would include a new two-story, 29,000-square-foot space shuttle museum, event courtyard, STEM building and courtyard, children’s outdoor classroom, pavilion, lawn and other amenities.

The space shuttle mock-up is also undergoing a “process of rehab and refurbishment,” according to Dickow, but is in “generally great shape.”

“The main work is getting it ready for the public, where visitors will be able to enter and get a sense of what it’s like inside a space shuttle,” Dickow said.

Astronauts would typically access the flight deck, mid-deck and crew compartment through a hatch, according to Dickow.

According to renderings, guests will instead enter through a much more accessible stairwell that puts visitors inside a cargo bay.

A rendering of the space shuttle mock-up, dubbed “Inspiration,” at its place in the center of the museum expansion.

(Nadia Gonzalez, on behalf of the Columbia Memorial Space Center)

What is the mock-up and what’s its tie to Downey?

The shuttle mock-up’s history with Downey spans decades.

North American Rockwell International, now part of Boeing, built the prototype in 1972 at its Downey facility. The space shuttle became the world’s first reusable winged orbiting spaceship.

In total, 12,000 workers developed and manufactured the shuttle at the program’s peak on a sprawling 120-acre campus.

From April 12, 1981, through July 21, 2011, NASA fleets of shuttles flew 135 missions and helped build the International Space Station.

One of those shuttles — Endeavour — was hauled into the middle of its future home, the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center at Exposition Park, in January 2024.

That museum is also expected to be open before the Olympics.

“This is going to be something that the L.A. area will be able to show off to people from around the world and I want to make sure we’re a part of that,” Dickow said. “Downey and Southeast L.A. sometimes don’t get a lot of the spotlight and this is something that we’ll be able to put out there.”

The week’s biggest stories

Pedestrians cross the street in downtown Los Angeles under light rain on Friday.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

SoCal treads through stormy weather

Rebuilding after January fires

Opposition to immigration forces in California

A Sacramento corruption bombshell

• The federal fraud case against Gov. Gavin Newsom’s former chief of staff and other well-connected aides is entangled with one of California’s — and the country’s — most powerful political circles.
• Dana Williamson, who joined the governor’s office in early 2023 and departed late last year, was arrested Wednesday and faces charges of bank and tax fraud.

Explosive Epstein emails about Trump

• Donald Trump “knew about the girls” and “spent hours at my house,” Jeffrey Epstein wrote in emails.
• See what’s in the emails released by House Democrats on Wednesday.

More big stories

This week’s must-read

More great reads

For your weekend

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

Going out

Staying in

L.A. Timeless

A selection of the very best reads from The Times’ 143-year archive.

Have a great weekend, from the Essential California team

Jim Rainey, staff reporter
Hugo Martín, assistant editor, fast break desk
Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor
June Hsu, editorial fellow
Andrew J. Campa, weekend writer
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters

How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to [email protected]. Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on latimes.com.

In September, Donald Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself on the shores of Lake Michigan in Chicago, depicted as Lt. Col. Kilgore, the gung-ho warmonger memorably played by Robert Duvall in Francis Ford Coppola’s messy masterpiece, “Apocalypse Now” — except the graphic bore the title “Chipocalypse Now.”

Trump sent out the message as his scorched-earth immigration enforcement campaign descended on the Windy City after doing its cruelty calisthenics in Southern California over the summer. Two months later, the campaign — nicknamed “Operation Midway Blitz” — shows no sign of slowing down.

La migra has been so out of control that a federal judge issued an injunction against their use of force, saying what they’ve done “shocks the conscience.” Among other outrages, agents shot and killed an immigrant trying to drive away from them, ran into a daycare facility and dragged out a teacher and tear-gassed a street that was about to host a Halloween kiddie parade.

I had a chance to witness the mayhem it has caused last week — and how Chicagoans have fought back.

The University of Chicago brought me to do talks with students and the community for a couple of days, including with members of the Maroon, the school’s newspaper. Earlier in the week, Fox News put them on blast because they had created a database of places around campus where la migra had been spotted.

Good job, young scribes!

In Little Village, pocket Patton meets his match

After my speech at the University of Chicago’s Divinity School, I noticed someone had hung whistles around the neck of a bronze bust. Whistles have become the unlikely tool of resistance in the city, I wrote in a columna — something that I argued Latinos nationwide had also employed metaphorically with their election night clapback at Republicans.

When I woke up Thursday morning at my tony hotel, the Chicago Tribune’s front page screamed “Use of Force Under Fire” and focused on the actions of commander-at-large Gregory Bovino. You remember him, Angelenos: he’s the pocket Patton who oversaw the pointless invasion of MacArthur Park in July and seemed to spend as much time in front of cameras as doing his actual job.

Bovino has continued the buffoonery in Chicago, where he admitted under oath to lying about why he had tossed a tear gas canister at residents in Little Village, the city’s most famous Mexican American neighborhood, in October (Bovino originally said someone hit him with a rock).

I Ubered to Little Village to meet with community activist Baltazar Enriquez so we could eat at one of his neighborhood’s famous Mexican restaurants and talk about what has happened.

I instead walked right into a cacophony of whistles, honks and screams: Bovino and his goons were cruising around Little Village and surrounding neighborhoods that morning just for the hell of it.

From L.A. to the rest of the country, and back

“Every time Trump or la migra lose in something, they pull something like this,” a business owner told me as she looked out on 26th Street, Little Village’s main thoroughfare. Customers were hiding inside her store. Over four hours, I followed Enriquez as he and other activists drove through Little Village’s streets to warn their neighbors what was happening.

The scene played out again in Little Village on Saturday shortly after I filed my columna, with Bovino holding a tear gas canister in his hand and threatening to toss it at residents, openly mocking the federal judge’s injunction prohibiting him from such reckless terrorizing (Monday, the Department of Homeland Security claimed agents had weathered gun shots, bricks, paint cans and rammed vehicles). And to top it off, he had his officers pose in front of Chicago’s infamous stainless steel bean for a photo, just like they did in front of the Hollywood sign (Block Club Chicago reported the funboys shouted “Little Village” for giggles).

Given ICE just received billions of dollars in funds to hire more agents and construct detention camps across the country, expect more scenes like this to continue in Chicago, boomerang back to Southern California and cut through the heart of Latino USA in the weeks, months and years to come. But I nevertheless left Chicagoland with hope — and a whistle.

Time for us to start wearing them, Los Angeles.

Today’s top stories

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) currently faces the lowest approval ratings of any national leader in Washington.

(Jacquelyn Martin / Associated Press)

The government shutdown

• Senators approved a deal that could end the shutdown on a 60-40 vote, a day after Senate Republicans reached a deal with eight senators who caucus with Democrats.
• Democrats in the House vowed to keep fighting for insurance subsidies.
• Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is facing pressure to step down as Senate Democratic leader after failing to prevent members of his caucus from breaking ranks.
• States are caught in Trump’s legal battle to revoke SNAP benefits after a federal judge ordered full funding.

A brief bout of summer weather

Courts protect LGBTQ+ rights

More big stories

Commentary and opinions

• California columnist Anita Chabria argues that Democrats crumbled like cookies in the shutdown fight.
• Gov. Gavin Newsom is still writing his path to the presidency. Columnist George Skelton points to Zohran Mamdani for inspiration.
• President Trump’s effort to rename Veterans Day flopped — and for good reason, argues guest contributor Joanna Davidson.

This morning’s must reads

Other great reads

For your downtime

(Andrew Rae / For The Times)

Going out

Staying in

Question of the day: What’s one special dish your family makes for Thanksgiving?

Judi Farkas said: “An old Russian recipe that has descended through 5 generations of our family, Carrot Tzimmis was traditionally served as part of the Passover meal. It’s perfect with a Thanksgiving turkey. Tzimmis is sweet, as are so many of the Thanksgiving dishes, so I pair it with a Jalapeño Cornbread dressing and a robust salad vinaigrette so that no one gets overwhelmed. It connects me to my family’s heritage, but repurposed for the holidays we celebrate now.”

Email us at [email protected], and your response might appear in the newsletter this week.

And finally … the photo of the day

A person surfs at Salt Creek Beach on Sunday in Dana Point.

(Juliana Yamada/Los Angeles Times)

Today’s great photo is from Juliana Yamada of a surfer at Salt Creek Beach in Dana Point.

Have a great day, from the Essential California team

Jim Rainey, staff reporter
Hugo Martin, assistant editor
Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor
June Hsu, editorial fellow
Andrew Campa, weekend reporter
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters

How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to [email protected].

Out of sheer darkness, the Batman logo was emblazoned across the 86-foot-wide screen and dazzled my young eyes.

From Hollywood, I was instantly whisked away to Gotham City. The iconic DC comic book came to life and the booming thuds of the Caped Crusader smashing a pair of common thieves was real.

These were my first vivid memories of watching a movie in the larger-than-life Cinerama Dome on Sunset Boulevard, and being amazed by the screen’s size and the sense of being transported into another galaxy.

But the dome is magical on the outside, as well as the inside. The concrete geodesic dome is made up of 316 individual hexagonal and pentagonal shapes in 16 sizes. Like Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, it’s a structure that has become a Hollywood landmark.

The Dome represented a special place for me, until it became just another of the dozens of businesses in L.A. that never returned after pandemic closures in 2020.

Ever since, there have been rumblings that the Dome would eventually reopen. Although nothing is definitive, my colleague Tracy Brown offered a bit of hope in a recent article.

What’s the latest

Dome Center LLC, the company that owns the property along Sunset Boulevard near Vine Street, filed an application Oct. 28 for a conditional-use permit to sell alcohol for on-site consumption at the Cinerama Dome Theater and adjoining multiplex. The application doesn’t mention an reopening date or any details about movie screenings returning to the dome but suggests that a reopening may be in the works.

Elizabeth Peterson-Gower of Place Weavers Inc., said Dome Center is seeking a new permit that would “allow for the continued sale and dispensing of a full line of alcoholic beverages for on-site consumption in conjunction with the existing Cinerama Dome Theater, 14 auditoriums within the Arclight Cinemas Theater Complex, and restaurant/cafe with two outdoor dining terraces from 7:00 am – 4:00 am, daily,” according to the application filed by the company’s representative.

This would would be a renewal of the current 10-year permit, which expires Nov. 5.

The findings document filed with the City Planning Department also mentions that “when the theater reopens, it will bring additional jobs to Hollywood and reactivate the adjacent streets, increasing safety and once again bringing vibrancy to the surrounding area.”

A representative for Dome Center LLC did not respond immediately Friday to a request for comment.

What happened to the Dome?

The Cinerama Dome opened in 1963 and had been closed since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

Since the closing, the news about the future of the theater has been ambiguous.

In April, 2021, the owner of Pacific Theatres and ArcLight Cinemas announced they would not reopen the beloved theater even after the pandemic ended. But then, in December, sources told The Times that plans were in the works to reopen the Cinerama Dome and the attached theater complex.

In 2022, news that the property owners obtained a liquor license for the renamed “Cinerama Hollywood” fueled hope among the L.A. film-loving community’s that the venue was still on track to return.

But the Cinerama Dome’s doors have remained closed.

Signs of life

At a public hearing regarding the adjacent Blue Note Jazz Club in June, Peterson-Gower reportedly indicated that although there were not yet any definitive plans, the property owners had reached out to her to next discuss the future of the Cinerama Dome.

Perhaps this new permit application is a sign plans are finally coming together.

After the kind of year Los Angeles has endured — with devastating fires and demoralizing immigration raids — it would certainly bolster the spirits of all Angelenos to have another local landmark reopen its doors to welcome movie-loving patrons like me.

Today’s top stories

California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks as he stands with First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom during an election night news conference at a Democratic Party office in Sacramento on Nov. 4, 2025.

(Godofredo A. Vásquez / Associated Press)

Voters approve Prop. 50

After World Series celebration, ICE and Border Patrol gather at Dodger Stadium once again

• Dozens of federal immigration agents were seen staging in a Dodger Stadium parking lot Tuesday morning, a day after the team returned home to celebrate its back-to-back championships with thousands of Angelenos.
• Videos shared with The Times and on TikTok show agents in unmarked vehicles, donning green vests and equipped with white zip ties in parking lot 13.
• Five months ago, protests erupted outside the stadium gates when federal immigration used the parking lot as a processing site for people who had been arrested in a nearby immigration raid.

Sen. Alex Padilla says he won’t run for California governor

• “It is with a full heart and even more commitment than ever that I am choosing to not run for governor of California next year,” Padilla told reporters outside his Senate office in Washington.
• Padilla instead said he will focus on countering President Trump’s agenda in Congress, where Democrats are currently in the minority in both the House and Senate, but hope to regain some political clout after the 2026 midterm elections.

What else is going on

Commentary and opinions

This morning’s must-read

For your downtime

A view of landscaping at the home of Susan Gottleib and her Gottleib Native Garden in Beverly Hills.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Going out

Staying in

A question for you: What’s the best hiking trail in SoCal?

Alexandra writes: “Sullivan Canyon, for sure.”

Rochelle writes: “Can’t ever go wrong in Griffith Park, but for overall exercise, killer views, artifacts, and entertainment without wearing yourself out, my hiking partner and I like the Solstice Canyon Loop in Malibu, 3.4 miles. The most popular hike in the canyon, for good reason!”

Email us at [email protected], and your response might appear in the newsletter this week.

And finally … your photo of the day

Joe Rinaudo hopes to host tours and educational opportunities at his home theater and museum through a nonprofit group dedicated to preserving photoplayers.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Today’s great photo is from Times photographer Jason Armond at the home of Joe Rinaudo, the foremost expert on photoplayers, who is preserving the soundtrack to a bygone movie era.

Have a great day, from the Essential California team

Jim Rainey, staff reporter
Hugo Martín, assistant editor, fast break desk
Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor
Andrew Campa, Sunday writer
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters

How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to [email protected]. Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on latimes.com.